EDITORIAL: SMU crafts right response to rape chant

Saint Mary’s University today unveiled plans to implement some of the recommendations made last year by a panel formed after a frosh week chant glorified sexual assault. Pictured here are Colin Dodds, SMU president, and panel chairman Wayne MacKay at the release of MacKay’s report in Halifax on Dec. 19, 2013. (TIM KROCHAK/Staff)

To say incoming students at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax will get a different welcome next week, compared to events 12 months earlier, would be putting it mildly.

A year ago, hundreds of students new to Saint Mary’s were videotaped belting out chants, under the direction of older student frosh week “leaders,” that explicitly glorified the rape of underage girls.

When that video aired, the firestorm of shock and outrage that quickly followed badly battered Saint Mary’s reputation, though, to be fair, SMU is far from the only post-secondary school trying to deal with issues of sexualized violence and widespread ambiguity over what “consent” means among young people.

In reaction, Saint Mary’s university president Colin Dodds wisely struck an expert council to investigate and advise on attitudes toward sexualized violence on campus. That group, led by Dalhousie law professor Wayne MacKay, issued 20 recommendations in a December report that optimistically suggested Saint Mary’s — if it chose — could use the crisis to become a leader in combating sexualized violence, a model for the rest of the country.

To SMU’s credit, the far-reaching, sensible plans unveiled today by the school’s action team tasked with implementing the MacKay report’s recommendations could very well start to do just that.

One profound change reflects the reality that for a new student, adapting to a new phase in life as momentous and challenging as starting university takes far more than a week. So though there’ll still be several days of activities before classes launch — the renamed “Welcome Week” described as being about both education and fun — orientation itself will now be a year-long process at Saint Mary’s.

A big part of that process will address existing dysfunctional societal norms head-on; in other words, the type of thinking that saw no problem in encouraging new students to repeat the once-annual SMU frosh week chant that promoted underage rape.

To that end, there’ll be mandatory online modules that undergrads will have to complete concerning consent, its legal definition and what it means. There’ll be peer-to-peer training to empower bystanders to speak up against sexualized and other discriminatory behaviour by others, whether students, staff or faculty. There’ll be more course selections that incorporate greater understanding of such issues. There’ll be a new, university-wide Charter of Respect.

And that only covers some of what SMU officials intend to try to do. They want people on campus — and that means everyone — using more critical thinking about the underlying causes of sexualized violence and interpersonal disrespect.

Their goals are ambitious and take on some strong societal headwinds, but they’re precisely what one would hope an institution of higher learning would attempt. Many will be watching the results with interest.